The Current PUG Meta (aka ramblings of an old man)

[Gulbasaur]

Okay, so... I started around EU launch. I remember Croatoa being the hot new zone in town and the days before inherent powers. I remember paying the beta of City of Villains and then later doing the first crossover event as a peacebringer and someone sending me "how did you do that?!" when I shapeshifted because they had separate membership for a while and I was the first Kheldian he'd ever seen. It was neat. 

 

It was a simpler time, blueside. Team composition was crucial. Defenders were everyone's best friend. Controllers would make-or-break a task force (seriously, I remember having to go AFK for a fight and finding out that my team had found it so hard they decided to just wait for me rather than risk fighting a losing battle). Tankers were royalty. Blasters did epic damage that no-one could compare to. Scrappers were... scrappers. Combat felt very team-focused. Everyone had a place. Everyone had a job to do. 

 

Kheldians were always a bit of an uneasy addition... the fact that they had no clear place in a team made people sort of skeptical of them for a bit. I remember being told off for pulling on my PB because that was the blaster's job, until I pointed out that I could pull and take the fallout. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but roles were much more defined in the early game so someone who could do both always felt like an anomaly.  

 

CoV never quite rubbed me the right way. Teaming felt chaotic. Tactics were irrelevant - you just create a sort of deathzone and hope things stay in it. But, yeah, villains, I get it. Heroes create opportunities, villains exploit them. Every redside AT is built to solo whereas blueside that's only really true of scrappers. When everyone is DPS, you just have to DPS everything. That's fine. Not for me, but fine.

 

Time passed. I got bored. I left. Thirteen? years later, I returned! 

 

What the hell has happened to combat since Going Rogue? Why didn't the original devs try to balance anything between the two "sides"? The villain ATs are stronger at so little cost, with few exceptions so Old Skool CoH combat has just... gone. 

 

There's no pulling of anything lower than an AV. AoE's happen when the brute stops walking, regardless of anything else. It's scrapperlock all over again, only this time there's a positive feedback loop. Knockback is illegal because it goes against the brute's constant need to generate fury so combat happens as soon as they find an enemy. Defenders and controllers are now roleplaying choices compared to corruptors and dominators. Peacebringers are verboten because someone saw on a google docs spreadsheet that they have low DPS due to a error in the data entry. Cheap IOs are fun, but when I can tank AVs on a fortunata, even I feel like I'm cheesing it a bit. 

 

At some point, the villains won... 

 

Please don't take anything here super seriously. I'm sure your team is marvellous. I understand the game changed, but I still wonder why the original dev team didn't do more to ensure most blueside ATs were still relevant. I sort of miss old-style gameplay a bit and it's refreshing when I get on a team of mostly blueside ATs as combat does feel more structured, even though I main a VEAT myself. There is a definite change in the average group scenario, from what I've seen and what I remember. 

Edited November 14, 2019 by Gulbasaur

[Fan Mail]

I don't know if I agree with Villains being over-powered compared to Heroes but I will agree that Red-side is harder than blue.  Even though you didn't say that!  lol

 

For example, do a rob the bank mission, go straight to bank with a lvl 8ish whatever (Brute, Corruptor, Dom, MM...).   Don't you dare go after the in-bank mobs before you wait and clear the 3 waves of Longbow.  If/when you defeat the Longbow, then the mission goes back to manageable.  

 

Now, post level 12, meh, I can handle it.  

 

Ok, that's my contribution to your thread.

[DougGraves]

I play almost exclusively lower levels - mostly 12-32.  And the times I play above that I find the game is totally different.

 

At level 16 players are cautious.  Spawns take awhile to fight.  Things need to be controlled, people need to be healed.

 

At level 32 it is just a rush from spawn to spawn with them being wiped out quickly.  All spawns can be locked down.  Only in very large rooms is tactics necessary.

 

I ran an ITF and probably never will again.  2 tankers who were 50's with massive lists of IO set bonuses.  They could stand in the middle of a huge spawn with their health barely moving.  And that's what they did.  Everyone else go defeated over and over again but the tankers just stood in place and slugged it out with the EBs and AVs.  There were no tactics, no attempt at tanking.  It was just godmode characters grinding through enemies that had no chance of defeating them while we watched and tried to stay alive.

 

The most fun I have had since coming back was doing Atta with a team.  Every spawn was dangerous.  An extra spawn joining in was horrifying.  We had to pull and use tactics to make it work.  It was an actual challenge, not just a question of how much the team could split up so it could defeat the enemies faster.

 

If you want to play CoX as a challenging game rather than a proving ground for your Mids building skills, just join a lower level team doing missions.  There's a few dozen of us still up for a challenge.

[Riverdusk]

1 hour ago, Gulbasaur said:

 

 

There's no pulling of anything lower than an AV. AoE's happen when the brute stops walking, regardless of anything else. It's scrapperlock all over again, only this time there's a positive feedback loop. Knockback is illegal because it goes against the brute's constant need to generate fury so combat happens as soon as they find an enemy. Defenders and controllers are now roleplaying choices compared to corruptors and dominators. Peacebringers are verboten because someone saw on a google docs spreadsheet that they have low DPS due to a error in the data entry. Cheap IOs are fun, but when I can tank AVs on a fortunata, even I feel like I'm cheesing it a bit. 

 

At some point, the villains won... 

 

Please don't take anything here super seriously. I'm sure your team is marvellous. I understand the game changed, but I still wonder why the original dev team didn't do more to ensure most blueside ATs were still relevant. I sort of miss old-style gameplay a bit and it's refreshing when I get on a team of mostly blueside ATs as combat does feel more structured, even though I main a VEAT myself. There is a definite change in the average group scenario, from what I've seen and what I remember. 

I've not seen anyone really asking for or playing a corrupter over a defender or a dom over a controller myself.  Defenders and corruptors especially are pretty close now (vigilance and procs on defenders and their better debuffs mostly equalize them even solo). I think the only one that has really taken over is brutes.  They are pretty much the go to melee class.  

 

The rest of your post is more about the power creep with cheap IO's and incarnate stuff that has improved everyone and made the whole game easier.  Not really about villains "winning".

[roleki]

2 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

[...] Knockback is illegal because it goes against the brute's constant need to generate fury so combat happens as soon as they find an enemy. [...]

While I sympathize with your overall message, I have to point out that Knockback has been frowned on in teams from the moment people figured out that's what they called the effect that sent mobs flying out of their FoV.  

 

As for the state of balance in the game... as much as I miss that feeling you'd get when the PUG you joined had *just* the right mix of DPS/control/buffs, I do NOT miss the feeling you'd get when the team was 'off' by one of those elements and your team had literally no chance of finishing the mission in front of them until you plugged that hole.   

 

YMMV, but I do not miss the days when there was a very real chance your evening would be spent either standing around while the star recruited, or rushing into the mission with a lopsided team that would wipe repeatedly and really drive home the point that you should have stood around recruiting some more.

 

Power creep may have undercut those sporadic bursts of serendipitous efficiency, but to me the game as it is today offers a more consistently productive experience. 

 

Put it another way, if I'm going to traumatize my kids by ignoring their pitiable cries for an hour, I want to spend that time IN the cave, not standing around outside of it.

[Coyote]

20 minutes ago, roleki said:

YMMV, but I do not miss the days when there was a very real chance your evening would be spent either standing around while the star recruited, or rushing into the mission with a lopsided team that would wipe repeatedly and really drive home the point that you should have stood around recruiting some more.

 

As DougGraves just said above, those days still exist. At about levels 10-30 or so. And as he also said, the fights were hard and wipes were possible, but with good play they could finish. I don't recall any time when you HAD to wait for particular teams unless the players were generally bad. I recall all-Blaster teams doing TF, and that's probably the worst composition that I can think of in the early days (at least Issue 2 on, since in I1 you had the broken Smoke Grenade). Really, there were some tough missions but in general door missions without AVs, lopsided teams just meant you had to take a bit more care playing, pull away from adds, adn so on.

 

Right now, at the higher end (40+, if not 30+), there are enough players with enough set bonuses that you can't really team wipe... at least some of the players will be capable of tanking the entire spawn while the weaker half of the team runs back from the hospital. This is not greatly to my liking, as I prefer a challenge and so have to solo if I want to risk being killed... but I have seen that a lot of players do like to just faceroll opponents and crush them before you and listen to the lamentation of their Carnies, and use the game as a relaxing "we stomp everything" experience rather than as a challenge. I suppose it's hard to make everyone happy all at the same time.

[Jeneki]

2 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

It was a simpler time, blueside. Team composition was crucial.

Isn't that the opposite of simpler?

[MunkiLord]

3 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

Knockback is illegal because it goes against the brute's constant need to generate fury

My suggestion is to find a better Brute to team with.

[jubakumbi]

11 minutes ago, Coyote said:

I suppose it's hard to make everyone happy all at the same time.

Wise words.

 

Personally, I play games in general to get away from having to wait for, cater to, and generally interact with people.

I love that all ATs, IME, can solo just fine.

While I do team, it's way worse of an experience IMO to have to worry at all about who showed up to play.

IME, from Retail Live and now, it had never realy mattered in CoH and that has been the fun of it...

 

Taking the powers in the group and making the mobs melt with what youv'e got, rather than pre-baking the group to have the exact combo needed is, IMO, way more fun.

 

The perfect combo groups IME are just as boring as an OP steamroll or a herding team.

Unexpected chaos is what makes the game fun for me, predictability is boring, I love RNG drops as well, random is fun, IMO.

[Marine X]

As a fellow Old Man....

I can appreciate the struggles with the changes, I started Playing Shortly after Launch & had to get this new fangled thing BROADBAND if I wanted to play.

I was a subscriber till they told us in August 2012 that they were shutting it down. I was 40 years old when the game started, 48 when it went away.

3 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

What the hell has happened to combat since Going Rogue?

I am 55 now. I was so glad to just have the game back that a lot of the changes slipped my mind. I totally forgot about Incarnate Abilities, some of the proliferation, and how Tanks were sort of considered by many to be irrelevant. Team Tanks were what I did, almost exclusively. The pace of the game now is partly a product of Brutes trying to keep Fury pegged, a fascination with who can do it faster and a generally less Comic Hero Population. Anymore getting to the next crowd first and laying down your thing is way more Important than holding Aggro away from support players, who end up dying repeatedly when left to deal with more than they can handle. It's just the new normal, not better, not worse, just different. I solo a LOT. Like all the Dark Astoria Content. Once in a while I find a team of like minded people and usually end up with a new Global Friend or 2. I'm still having fun. I just rolled a Bio-Armor / Savage Melee Tank, he just finished the Hollows and is 14, and I like, a lot.

[Abraxus]

In a team situation, I always have the most fun when the difficulty is dialed up just high enough to ensure that without some kind of tactical, and cohesive approach, the team will get it's ass handed to it!  The mix of AT, and powersets doesn't seem to matter as much as how they are used, especially against the more challenging opponents.  But, I agree that when fighting large mobs of white/yellow/orange con'd mobs with a group containing at least half Incarnate equipped folks, is a little monotonous. 

 

My vision of this game is a super hero, or villain, who starts off with some special abilities, and grows more powerful as they progress.  By the time they reach L50+3, they have achieved that ultimate power, and in order to continue to be relevant/useful, must seek out quarry worthy of their status.  That (again, to me) does not include mowing down L1 NPCs in Atlas Park, or the equivalent.  It means putting those powers to use in a way that benefits the citizens of Paragon City, against foes that require that level of power in order to triumph. 

 

I am grateful that the game is flexible enough to allow for my preferred style, as well as anyone else's, so they can play it according to their vision too.

[Heraclea]

Myself, I prefer to let people play the characters they brung.  I often play the tanker.  And people will either need me to tank for them or they won't.  I tend to play fairly conservatively and don't move on to the next spawn until the last mobs from the old one are down, because the last mobs standing tend to be bosses, and they're the ones that need to be kept corralled.  If there's a scrapper or brute handling it, that's another thing.  But if you need me to tank, you'll turn off Sprint and let me get there.  Sprint doesn't actually help you move faster in the caves anyways. 

 

My pet peeves are large, noisy pets that are always in the way - not a "mastermind" problem per se, because some of the Lore pets are as bad or worse - and the dominator or controller that wants to root all the mobs in place before they've been gathered for the nukers, without using the sort of hard controls that actually take them out of the game.  Floaties are hard enough to rope in, and if they're rooted they can't close and tend to just spam ranged attacks. 

[Tempest Teacup]

I tend to agree with Abraxus. Adjusting the difficulty level up often makes the game challenging enough to mandate some tactics and teamwork, and that's what my friends and I usually do. I've still been gloriously faceplanting for stupid tactical decisions on a regular basis even at the higher levels.

 

Granted, I've spent a lot of time building up my rolodex of like-minded players-- so I don't have to roll with PUGs that often. But it is still absolutely possible to find people who want to do things Old Skool-- and people who are playing builds they think are neat even if they aren't spreadsheet-optimal. We're out there, I promise! 

[Snarky]

Meh many of the issues to find shocking and disturbing are a decade old.  I started an issue or so after Redside was added.  I naturally gravitated to a redside Brute.  I still run Brutes most of the time. 

 

The city has has always been a mosh pit for me. I like it.  Tactics exist.  Brutes have strategy.  Kill stuff

[EmmySky]

I like my teams with a bit of strategy, too.  Probably why I solo a lot.  I was on a team for the Anti-Matter arc and some missions I would load in to find its done..exit now.  I just dont zone or load fast enough for that play, but I also dont prefer it.  I enjoy pulling.  I enjoy the tactics of making sure you only aggro the group closest and not the one beside them.  I dont enjoy herding or rushing.  Right now I have a lvl 19 sentinel (hero) visiting Praetoria to do a bit of street sweeping.  Fun and relaxing!  And a nice change of scenery.  

 

Yeah, the game is way different than before (I played 04 to 10) but go out there and enjoy it.  If you end up on a team you don't care for or just dont match, kindly make your excuses and go about whatever you do enjoy.  Happy hunting! 

[Clave Dark 5]

11 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

What the hell has happened to combat since Going Rogue? Why didn't the original devs try to balance anything between the two "sides"? The villain ATs are stronger at so little cost...

Try playing pre-fixed Stralkers if you think Villain ATs were stronger.  🙂

(I did, weirdo that I am.)

[Parabola]

I'm finding myself increasingly interested in the idea of founding (or joining if something like it already exists) a supergroup dedicated to old fashioned gameplay. The rules would be simple; SO's (or common IO's) only and no incarnates. I don't know if that's something that other people would be interested in though?

 

I love my twinked out toons as much as the next guy and recently I've been hugely into the whole proc monster phenomenon so I wouldn't be running all my toons like this by any means. I just think it would be nice for a few teaming dedicated toons to run in an environment that worked a little differently.

 

I'm on reunion, let me know if you think this is a good idea or if you know of an sg that does this already?

[Midnight Blue Mage]

I wish there were like 10 more Hamidons, and each one had to be defeated in a different way. Hami feels like the most class/style "inclusive" encounter in the game to me because having a varied team composition is actually very important (even a necessity!), and you need a LOT of characters and some leadership/team organization/retreat strategies in place in order to defeat him. Everyone truly contributes and it's a fun, engaging battle

 

So if there were just a dozen or so additional city-block sized monsters, that would be pretty sweet :]

[DougGraves]

8 hours ago, parabola said:

I'm finding myself increasingly interested in the idea of founding (or joining if something like it already exists) a supergroup dedicated to old fashioned gameplay. The rules would be simple; SO's (or common IO's) only and no incarnates.

 

It would be cool if there were a server with IO sets and incarnate powers removed.  Leave epic power pools and everything else.  I don't think those are game breaking.

[jubakumbi]

4 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

 

It would be cool if there were a server with IO sets and incarnate powers removed.  Leave epic power pools and everything else.  I don't think those are game breaking.

The code is out there, this can be done.

Just prop it up and see if there are enough players that like the game that way to make it a success.

 

IMO, it would be easier to just get a group that wants this style of play, as mentioned above, since it's possible to ignore IOs and Incarnates if you choose.

Hawkeye and Thor are not really equal to one another, so having SOs and IOs on the same team still makes sense to me.

 

I am of the opinion this is super-happy-fun-time not struggle-to-survive-time or need-a-team-to-feel-right time, so I like the power levels such that everyone can just choose what they want.

 

IMO, the issue here is that some people will simply not quit teams.

If the team is steam-rolling more than you like, is it really that hard to drop and form one that is to your liking?

Is it really that hard to not follow the herd, but to instead decide to lead one more in line to ones own preferences?

 

All of the tools needed to have groups of players enjoying the game at different levels of power and playstyles already exist IMO.

 

At the same time, IMO, too many players want these things enshrined in code, rather than having to make choices.

It's this whole wacky idea that simply because you can make a character that can break the game, you have to do so, or that the code must prevent us from doing it becaue we cannot control ourselves.

We all get to choose how we play...and that is the best of all worlds from my PoV.

[Omega-202]

Like others have said, the tools are there to play "the old way", you just need to go make your own teams with like minded players.  The issue isn't the new ATs, the issue is power creep.

 

You want roles to matter?  Run Synapse or Moonfire or Tarkoss or some Oro arcs at +4 without IOs.  Make a thread on the boards looking for others that want to do the same.  

 

In my experience though, a lot of people like the new meta.  People want to feel like a superhero and to them, that often means feeling like Superman or Ironman and not Daredevil. The rushing from group to group experience feels more superhero-y, where its not about you being in danger, but more about "how fast can I thwart the villains before they do more harm to the city?". 

 

For me, I want a standard mission to feel like the Avengers Age of Ultron opening scene.  Yes, Hawkeye got hurt, but the rest of the Avengers were basically operating as walking gods, mowing through Hydra as fast as possible.  To me, that's what standard lvl 50 content should feel like, with tougher threatening fights being the finale of an arc or TF.  I think some of the standard lvl 50 standby's do that well (ITF at +4, Apex, Lady Grey, MLTF, LRTF).

[THEDarkTyger]

On 11/14/2019 at 11:56 AM, Gulbasaur said:

. Knockback is illegal 

What version of Live were you playing? Knockback has been frowned upon since day 1 of Live... This is nothing new.

[MetaVileTerror]

I kind of want to see "The Knockback Police" now.  When you use too much Knockback, they come busting in to your mission, slap cuffs on you, and read you your rights.  Something like:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRxwBb7ev1Y&t=54s

[Solarverse]

OP, I hear you, man. I'm right there with you. I so badly miss the way this game was before IO's, before PvP and honestly, before Villains. People have no idea the structure we had and no longer play by any rules. Teams feel very chaotic and sloppy now, where in the old days everything ran smoothly. So I am right there with you and it bleeds my heart, man.

 

Sadly, unless someone creates a Vanilla CoH, I'm afraid we will never get that back. 

Edited November 17, 2019 by Solarverse

[jubakumbi]

5 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 no longer play by any rules

I don't need to be told how to enjoy my free time by the restrictive rules of others, thanks.

Chaos is awesome, prescribed rules and forced playstyles are boring and take no thought, other than to follow the prescribed 'rules'.

I choose not to follow but to enjoy my games on my own terms.

 

My gaming experience does not need to be derivative of the need for everyone to obey, thanks, I prefer unfettered creativity.

 

As as has been discussed, the playstyle you desire can be accomplished, just find the people who like the 'rules' you want to enforce and play with them.

 

If there are not enough of them for your liking, changing the game to force them to play your way in IMO a terrible idea.

 

Why do so many people want to go backwards and restrict others just because they cannot/will not adapt?